Susanna Clark, 2004, Bloomsbury.

Here’s a book that was widely hyped, and largely lives up to the expectations set for it. In a faux-historic novel, two men work alternately together and at odds in their efforts to return English Magic to its former prominence. The writing is solid, the descriptions evocative, and the story convincing. The characters are human, interesting, and provide occasional surprises to keep things moving along. While Clark has an overfondness for footnotes that tell too much of the story (leave us some mystery, please!), the style is reminiscent of Charles Palliser, although without all of his characteristic grimness.

Saki (H. H. Munro), 1914, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com

This collection of thirty-some short stories uses Beasts as the unifying theme. Whether it’s literal Beasts, as in the tale of upper class women stymied in their attempt to sneak into a exclusive party (to which they should have been invited) by a large boar, or figurative Beasts, as in the majority of the others, each story has a Beastly tie-in. We see a lot of Beastly behavior on the part of the Elite. Many of the stories feature twists; some of these twists can be seen approaching from a great distance. I don’t know if it’s because the stories have been widely imitated, or whether the plots were old even when published, but some of these stories felt like old chestnuts decorated up in a new retelling.

Walter Mosley, 2004, Little Brown and Company.

Another Easy Rawlins mystery. This time, Easy is called on by the police to help defuse a complicated situation emerging right after the Watts Riots of 1965. Of the series, Little Scarlet is perhaps the most intense, direct, and linear. There are fewer twists and turns, and things are much more what they appear to be — which is to say that they are a subtle, complex pattern of race relations in post-riot Los Angeles. Sure, things are less deceptive. Mosley deftly tells us a story, while revealing an evolving and fluid situation with regards to how people of different races — and classes — coexist in Los Angeles.

Fritz Kreisler, 1915, read as an e-book from BlackMask.com

This is a curiosity. A very patriotic little text on the horrors of the Eastern Front in World War I, written by a violinist who went on to compose famous works.
It is clear that Kreisler wanted to express the glory of the battle as a good patriot. The short text is filled with the kinds of things attacked by many other survivors of the war like Wilfred Owen and Reiner Maria; how bold and noble and glorious are the soldiers and the officers. Yet, Kreisler is also clearly horrified by what he has seen, by the slaughter and waste. He spends a lot of time trying to put a good light on events. He focuses on the camaraderie between the soldiers, even with their enemies, and on the positive things that the life of a soldier brings to a man. He obviously wants to write a patriotic text, and yet we can’t avoid seeing the negatives, the pointless battles, the waste of life, the privation, and the suffering. With the added benefit of historical hindsight, this probably reads quite differently than he intended. His closing words, about being proud to have given a contribution, no matter how small, to the glory of the homeland seem a tragic joke today.

Jose Saramago, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, 2000/2002, Harcourt Books.

This joins the list of books that can only be described as a pleasure of ambivalence. Saramago relies on his reputation (not to mention that Nobel Prize for literature) to encourage you to slog through the long, long sentences that are bereft of conventional punctuation. Sometimes unravelling the dialogue can be like a particularly challenging Scrabble game postmortem. And Saramago does not limit himself to making the mechanics of reading the only difficulty awaiting the reader — there are many self-indulgent asides, where he explains why he chooses a given adjective to describe a character, or engages in a stylistic monologue on why he varies the names by which he refers to the characters.
Once getting past the barricades that Saramago erected, we find ourselves in the world of an old potter in a beautiful, simple dystopian world. This world is familiar: the villages are being absorbed into the city, and the ciy is being absorbed by a shopping/planned-living facility known simply as The Center. The potter struggles with his changing world, the shift of the economic environment, and the usual issues of family, inlaws, and an adopted pet. These struggles are beautifully depicted, alternating between bold strokes and subtle details, and Saramago’s genius shows clearly.
The ending of the story comes abruptly, and, although we’ve been prepared for many of the circumstances, at least one aspect (the most significant, perhaps, and one for which the book is named) seemed forced. Perhaps it’s my ignorance, perhaps it’s due to the shallowness of my understanding of Plato, but the impact of the critical event didn’t make sense to me.